Australian Wine Research Institute celebrates new funding

The Australian Wine Research Institute has won A$11.1m in grant money to study metabolites.

The Australian Wine Research Institute is in Adelaide

The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) in Adelaide has secured major funding to the tune of A$11.1m ($7.47m) to invest in metabolomics, the study of chemical processes involving metabolites.

“This new funding allows for the expansion of the AWRI metabolomics facility in terms of capital equipment, skilled staff and capacity to support projects,” said Dr Dan Johnson, managing director of the AWRI. “The outcome reflects very positively on the efforts of the metabolomics team to deliver high quality services and infrastructure to agricultural industries and researchers.”

The investment comes from Bioplatforms Australia, which manages investment funding through the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), together with the South Australian Government. The funding is for work conducted at the AWRI from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2023.

The AWRI founded a metabolomics facility in 2008, which supports local and national researchers. Metabolomics gives scientists the ability to look at things from a ‘global’ perspective; to see the bigger picture of what happens during biological processes such as fermentation.

“The investment will allow all major capital equipment in the metabolomics facility to be renewed and, excitingly, will add new capacity in the form of a NMR instrument for analysis of liquid samples,” said Dr Johnson. “This will be the first such instrument on the Waite Campus, providing benefit to a range of co-located research organisations. The investment will also facilitate new research projects with industry and academic partners.”